1. Field of the Invention
This invention involves a medical unit that can be arranged inside a cabin of an aircraft or of another aircraft and provide high quality medical care to a passenger in flight.
Commercial flights are capable of transporting more and more passengers over periods of time that continue to grow. As such, it happens more frequently that a passenger becomes victim of an illness or another injury during flight. If this passenger requires urgent care and aircraft personnel does not have the material capabilities to administer such care, the aircraft pilot must look to land at the nearest airport. The unscheduled stoppage at an airport to disembark a patient presents obviously numerous inconveniences, such as the delay imposed onto the other passengers, increased fuel consumption and additional airport taxes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Through patent U.S. Pat. No. 6,691,952, one has knowledge of a medical unit that can be put in place during flight to provide first aid care to a passenger. When not in use, the device according to U.S. Pat. No. 6,691,952 consists of a cabinet installed in a cabinet that is arranged transversally in the aircraft cabin, in front of a row of seats; beneficially, this device only occupies a rather limited space inside the cabin. The cabinet includes a folded bed as well as compartments that contain various diagnostic and medical care accessories. To put the medical unit in place, one opens the cabinet and one deploys the bed over two rows of seats for which the back has been laid reclined.
The medical unit according to U.S. Pat. No. 6,691,952 has several inconveniences during usage. On the one hand, the arrangement is uncomfortable for the person who is taking care of the patient because this person must remain standing, in front of the other passengers, on the side of the bed; moreover, the lack of privacy of such an arrangement must be difficult for the patient and for the other passengers. On the other hand, one must necessarily remove the passengers that were seated in the seats requisitioned to be able to deploy the bed, which poses a serious safety hazard when the plane is full. Finally, the small dimensions of this medical unit make it difficult to administer complex medical care or care that requires large medical equipment.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,273,366 reveals a medical unit that avoids certain of these inconveniences just mentioned. This device, that can be used to administer first aid to an aircraft passenger (and also to transport a patient from one aircraft to another), requires that the aircraft is equipped with a large-sized toilet space located along the wall of the cabin in a position adjacent to an access door to the cabin. The device includes a bed that, when not in use, is secured vertically to a wall of the toilet. When care must be administered to a passenger, other passengers are prohibited from using this toilet. Then, the bed is placed horizontally on adequate components that are removed from the toilet area. According to the mode of execution, the bed is placed longitudinally in certain positions between two extreme positions: in one of these extreme position, the patient is fully housed inside the toilet area which permits him to rest hidden from sight; in the other extreme position, the head of the patient is located in the area located in front of said cabin door (empty space by reason of air safety regulations, but that can be used in flight), which permits comfortably administering care to the patient. The medical unit can be surrounded by a curtain for privacy purposes.
But the comfort for all of the passengers of having an additional toilet space in the absence of a patient, as is shown by U.S. Pat. No. 6,273,366 presents inconveniences in the situation where, precisely, a passenger requires emergency assistance. Indeed, firstly (and as in the case of the device according to U.S. Pat. No. 6,691,952), the person taking care of the patient must remain standing on the side of the bed. Secondly, one can ask oneself whether the use of a toilet to provide medical care offers adequate guarantees of hygiene. But above all, thirdly, the space occupied by the equipment necessary to be able to use the device according to U.S. Pat. No. 6,273,366 as a toilet space (basin, sink, etc.) severely limits the space that can be used to arrange and store medical equipment; this leads to a limitation in the technical level and quality of care that can be provided to a potential patient, whose survival, in addition, will depend on the possibility of immediately benefiting (in other words, before the aircraft has the time to land) from appropriate care for his/her condition.
As such, the invention involves an aircraft cabin comprising an area that permits administering first aid medical care to a passenger, with this area comprising at least a portion of the regulatory space located in front of an access door to said cabin, with this aircraft cabin being remarkable by the fact that the rest of this area is occupied by a medical module fully dedicated to provide said first aid medical care.
Indeed, one will observe that the medical units according to the previous state of the art are designed to take into account the fact that each square centimeter on board of the aircraft is precious; as such, they are arranged so that one can benefit, when the medical unit is not used to administer care, of an additional space that can be used in flight, for instance, to have an additional toilet available, or additional seats (and as such, to transport a larger number of passengers). However, the authors of this invention have realized, on the basis of experience of this previous state of the art, that this possibility of benefiting from an additional space is probably incompatible with the requirement of being able to dispose of a high quality medical unit. As such, according to the invention, when there is no patient, the medical module is not convertible for a use other than medical care, and this to give priority to the quality of care that this medical module will be able to offer to a potential patient.
However, it will be noted that this medical module can only occupy a rather limited cabin space, since when there is a patient, one will be able to provide such patient with the all space required to give him the proper care while completing the medical unit (as known) with the space available in front of the cabin door adjacent to the medical module.